ported by that species of magnetic current which thrills along the road to the plaza on any day appointed for a corrida, throng joyously to watch the entertainment. Painters portray the suertes of the torero; poets describe them with a golden pen; and blind men sing them to enrapture the multitude."

Nor is the afición limited to merely a passive enthusiasm. I suppose there is no village in all the land, that does not celebrate, at least during the feria, a bullfight of an amateur description, such as the capeas, of one of which Vicálvaro must still retain a gory recollection.* Similarly disastrous was the "entertainment" afforded to the inhabitants of Montemayor on August 31st, 1899-one amateur gored to death, and three dangerously injured.

When, as occasionally happens, foreigners are dragged into the question of the pros and cons of bullfighting, the bulk of the onslaught is directed against the English, as I submit, unjustly. It is perfectly true that prizefighting is a British and a bloody relaxation; but I am not aware of any law in the codes of the United Kingdom which compels a citizen to become a "bruiser" against his will; whereas it is extremely possible that a penco destined for immolation in the bull-ring, if the query were put to him in answerable form, would elect to be spared, if only for decency's sake, the ripping open of his belly in public.

* A small town near Madrid. At a capea held there in August of 1898, one amateur was gored in the stomach and killed on the spot; and twenty-seven were injured, some seriously.

However, apart from this, I am by no means certain that the English are generally adverse to the bullfight. Far from it. The French maintain a growing number of plazas de toros in the south of France; but England, curiously enough, may be stated to maintain two plazas on Spanish territory. On the threshold of Gibraltar are two handsome little bull-rings, those of Algeciras and La Línea, capable of seating some seven or eight thousand souls apiece, and which are practically dependent for their support upon the British garrison and the semiBritish population of the Rock; nor are the plaza gates sooner opened, a couple of hours before the spectacle is advertised to begin, than officers in mufti, and privates, corporals, lance corporals, and sergeants in dazzling Sunday uniform, together with their friends, families, and sweethearts, stream truculently in, as ceaseless as the Ganges. The English practical opinion of a Spanish bullfight is well expressed by the following observation. It was during Algeciras fair, when a bullfight is given on each of three successive days, that I asked the English wife of an English army captain how she had relished that afternoon's corrida. "Oh, it is dreadful," she replied, "horrible; but " (with a gleam of pleasurable anticipation) "I'm going again to-morrow."

I submit that on the grounds of utility alone the bullfight should be State-protected, and even receive a generous State subvention; for think of the number of persons who earn their livelihood in or about the plazas, who, but for the corridas, would be driven to earn it in some other manner! The pensions which the Spanish Government already pays might well be

increased by about a couple of thousand for the widows and orphans of toreros malogrados; and a mausoleum for bullfighters in San Francisco el Grande might well be constructed on the same lines as our Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. And where would be the harm if Señor Silvela, instead of buying or building ironclads which never steam, or cannon which never go off, except at the breech, should, when next he assume office as Premier of Spain, establish a bullfighting academy in every province? For here is an evident and potent reason why the theory and practice of the lidia should enter into, not an occasional, but every education. I read in the Liberal, in July of 1899

"Yesterday morning, a savage cow who was being taken to the slaughterhouse, made her escape in the Ronda de Segovia, attacking an assistant at the egg-shop of Don, inflicting a number of bruises on him, and ruining his wares.

"The animal continued her course along the Paseo of the Virgen del Puerto, dashing at everybody she met, including a lady with a child in her arms; an elderly porter carrying two glass doors, which were smashed to atoms; and a servant of the Town Council.

"The matador of novillos, Valentín Conde, who happened to be passing on his way to the Northern Railway Station, made use of a sword stick, and a blouse-which served him for muleta-handed him by a bystander, and killed the cow to the applause of the on-lookers."

Now it is clear that a Society which, in view of contingencies such as the above, persists in de

P

nouncing the indispensable practice of the toreo, ceases to be the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and at once becomes the Society for the Endangering of Human Life. If the lady, and the egg-vendor, and the elderly porter had all attended bullfighting classes from their infancy upwards, and carried a neat little sword stick apiece, the vaca brava would have been brought to a full stop long before she reached the Virgen del Puerto. In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "a discreet and gentlemanly" (or ladylike) "fence"; and the danger would have been conjured from the very outset, "to the applause of the on-lookers."

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CHAPTER X.

THE HISTORY OF THE BULLFIGHT.

HE bullfight is as old as Adam.

Some writers, notwithstanding, ascribe its introduction to the early Spaniards, or the Moors. Others give it a Roman

origin, and point to the ancient theatres at Murviedro, Mérida, and Tarragona, as having served for celebrating it. These latter commentators, after recalling that a considerable. number of Spanish bulls were sent to Rome for use in the Roman games, argue that a slave or Christian pitted in single combat against a wild bull may well have dodged the creature for some time in order to save his own skin and purely as a matter of instinct, thus inducing, unawares, the idea of playing him with cloaks and in a scientific manner. The theory is ingenious, but farfetched. Weighing the evidence fairly, it may be said that the Moors, though certainly not the inventors of the sport, did more than anyone else to make it popular. Under their auspices, from a mere hunt or chase, after the fashion of modern pigsticking, it grew to be the favourite amusement of the aristocracy, both infidel and Christian, assuming the form of a combat held within a coso cerrado, or closed space, and alternating with the tourney, or tablado.